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Utah Football Coach Teaches Anti-bullying and Human Decency

PublishedSeptember 28, 2013

Every once in a while I just have to stop, put my hands together and applaud, especially when I see someone taking a stand an anti-bullying stand. I’m a huge advocate when it comes to weight bias and bullying, it is a cause I will stand up and fight passionately for.

Nobody gets to stand there and pick on someone, make them feel bad or bully them with me around. Or at least, most accurately if you do, you’ll want to hope that you can talk louder, debate more profoundly, run faster or throw a harder punch than I do.

And boy howdy, let me tell you. I have been doing Bobby Whisnand‘s “It’s All Heart Program” and I throw some mean jabs and rock a mean upper punch these days. Opps did I say that out loud?

I don’t like bullies. I’ve distanced myself from them on more than one occasion, but I’ve never quite taken the stand that Utah High School Coach, Matt Labrum took; after hearing rumors that students and players were participating in cyber bullying on the site Ask.fm

After suspending the entire football team during homecoming week Coach Labrum gave players an option to win their playing privileges back in the form of community service activities, character education classes and extra study hall session in an effort to improve their grades, their treatment of their peers and elders and to cease their bullying behavior.

While Coach Labrum is getting national attention and a lot of support for his decision, I think the most impressive thing to me is that when all was said and done, the coach met with the student who had been harassed on Ask.fm and asked his forgiveness on behalf of the team.

There are so many times that I felt bullied. Heck, if I’m being honest maybe Coach Labrum needs to spend a little time “Training” some people in our community, because I get letters every day from women that feel bullied in the WLS World and WLS Community. With a growing population of 200,000 patients each year, if you don’t think there is a WLS World or a WLS Community, while that is your right, it’s not a delusion I share.

But we rarely teach adult’s life lessons like this; High School is really one of the final stages of our youth where life education and preparation can be forcibly taught by lesson plan. Because once we graduate from high school we seem to get this diploma that says “Fitch please, I know everything I need to be an adult, now let me live my life and make my own mistakes.”

Hopefully, thanks to Matt Labrum, 80 young men will have a little more in their “How to be a decent human being,” arsenal and we’ll have a little less bullying in the world. Now if only we had a few more men like Mr. Labrum to help pass that message along. Thank you Coach Labrum, for being a stand-up individual and being the type of man who will teach young boys lessons that might prevent them from doing something stupid like making farm animal noises at overweight women walking down the street. I’d like to shake your hand.

Speaking of Weight Bias – did you know that you can fight Weight Bias and Cyber bullying just like Matt Labrum by joining forces with the Obesity Action Coalition – a non-profit organization that realizes that obesity is one of the last acceptable forms of discrimination and works to fight the negative stigmas surround obesity through programs like Bias Busters and through Weight Bias Education. Add your voice to the OAC by becoming a member; together we can make a difference in education, advocacy and combating weight bias for millions of people affected by obesity.

About (Pandora) The Author

Jaime "Pandora" Williams

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